From Our Cold Dead Hands

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I’m Alyxportur, I live in Delve sovereign space, and I fly DPS/logistics characters under The Kadeshi. I grew up and out of highsec nearly four years ago, and I’ve been flying pilots in nullsec sov alliances for nearly three years now. I never plan on quitting EVE until I either die or Iceland gets covered by lava/rising Atlantic water.

As I promised last year, I will promise again: Whether you vote for me or not, if I win, I will still represent all of you as best as I can. We all want to see EVE continue to survive as a game we love, but also thrive.

Since my last campaign, CCP has improved upon two issues: corporate bookmarks and power projection.

The corp bookmark limit has increased, but for nullsec groups this is insufficient. Without alliance bookmarks, corporations have identical bookmarks to locations like jump bridges. Alliances may have been the band aid to early corporations banding together based on standings, but it isn't a temporary fix anymore. Alliances continue to need their own bookmarks. Upping the maximum size for corporations means that nullsec groups can then increase the number of duplicates, when a single set controlled by the holding corp of an alliance would be far more useful to a member of any alliance, regardless of whether they live in wormholes, nullsec, lowsec, or highsec. (CCP has said in the past they plan on changing corp management as a whole in a ~few years, but perhaps that could be fast-tracked since making the social aspect of EVE intuitive, logical and USEFUL encourages more gameplay.)

Capital power projection has been nerfed both in range and time. It takes more time and more jumps for a capital to go anywhere. Without the additional changes to sovereignty mechanics and structures, nullsec since Phoebe doesn't seem to have had any increase in sov warfare. It's as stagnant as it was before, if not more so (though congrats to the neutrals who managed to freeport some systems!). In regard to the expected changes, I'm not sure how occupancy-based nullsec does anything but encourage renter alliances protected by the PVP-alliances who control them. Sov structure changes may enable more border fighting and changes though, and I look forward to those patch notes.

Other topics:

Sentry drone scan resolution nerf to ishtars.

Cloaks ended up not being changed. Cloaky camping seems to be less of a problem than last year, but maybe that’s just because PLEX prices are too high to keep a toon camping for weeks at a time. Cloaks could still be tweaked, perhaps as part of the ongoing module tiericide so that they provide more and different options of how to fly ships rather than just what you can fly with them.

Players still deserve killmails for all anchorable units that they kill. The only ones that they don’t get credit for: mobile warp disruptors.

Expanding the in-game information on killmails to include useful data such as: damage over time charts, time to kill (e.g. from first PVP timer initiation on killed player up until ship/pod death), adding logistics to killmails, etc. When it comes to logistics being on killmails, if we participate in a fight and gain an aggression timer, why not award us a killmail recognition for the similar hard work that our dps brothers and sisters did? If you cut us, do we not bleed? (As a logi pilot, I’ll admit I’m biased on this topic.)

The new CREST API system shows a lot of promise and sitting in on a third-party developer discussion at EVE Vegas 2014 made me more excited for the future of it and its usefulness within EVE. Continuing to release parts of what it can do should encourage a lot of the current and new applications popping up for everyone to use, like SeAT.

While I may have been one of the few players who used the industrial teams, CCP took an interesting step in removing them from the game rather than leaving them for the usage minority. From my nullsec perspective, the bounty and kill right systems could benefit from changes. Most players don’t seem to hunt via either systems, but benefit from the bounty or activate the rights as they stumble upon someone.

CCP recently changed the rules for some mobile structures so that players only gained a suspect timer for shooting them. I’d like to see this extended to more structures.

The last change that I can remember to implants was just in how they were obtained (i.e. increasing availability and lowering costs for some, but not all, of the mindlink implants). It would be nice to see more changes that encourage the use of them. Pilots may no longer need to worry about losing skills with their pod losses, but implants don’t drop----and I’m sure I’m not the only corpse collector hoping for the day when I can salvage the bodies for random implant drops.

Encounter Surveillance Systems (ESSes) they’re nice and they provide some interesting content when an enemy interceptor comes into system, but pirate faction ESS units would provide more content in both the short- and long-term, as well as break some of the regional holds on faction-specific ships.

tl;dr = I want to see boring, stagnant and unused things change without becoming broken or worse than they were. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I live in nullsec. I like the taste of blueberry donuts.

Following my interview with Cap Stable, I thought more on the utility of being able to save and reuse structure layouts for planetary interaction. Being able to share these layouts between players would be remarkable, and turn an activity normally left to the individual into one that is a bit more social.

A similar mechanism for POS modules would be as useful (and likely used more). POSes are designed for their purpose just like ships. Saving module positions relative to the tower location and then using the mechanic to place the same number/type of modules on another POS serves a common need.... however the modules should only be placed as 'unanchored', leaving it to the player still to anchor and online the modules individually. I recognize that CCP has existing issues related to the POS code and rewriting it, but perhaps this feature (which I've only spoken to wormhole and nullsec players about so far) could be added to the game without complications from the existing code. Also, being able to share these 'POS plans' on a corporate level rather than a personal one would make sense as POSes are owned and controlled by corporate roles.

Steam Powered Spaceships

About the capital travel nerf, CCP managed to nerf the massive power projection of swarms of slowcats and mountains of titans and supers, but in the same time also destroyed the ability of small groups to use those said capitals.

And "same jump range" for ALL ships is boring and dumb.

---Eve is and has always about choices. Now there's no choice. You jump, you wait. End.

Well, pretty much like the new interface icons... all gray and boring. For some strange reason CCP is heading toward making everything "the same" in all latest patches. Game becomes more and more boring ...

As you seem to be running a very nullsec focused campaign, I'm going to ask you the following:

If you could only change one thing from each of the other areas of space - lowsec, highsec, and wormhole space - what would you choose to focus on, and why? What part of these areas of space need the most attention from CCP, and help from the CSM?

As you seem to be running a very nullsec focused campaign, I'm going to ask you the following:

If you could only change one thing from each of the other areas of space - lowsec, highsec, and wormhole space - what would you choose to focus on, and why? What part of these areas of space need the most attention from CCP, and help from the CSM?

Why? PVP opportunities between more than just you and your neighbors or random visitors to your constellation (I'd be interested in faction warfare pilots' view on it)

Wormholes: Tutorial mission(s) for new players which shows them how to find wormholes and in brief explains the benefits/hazards. My suggestion would be a frigate-sized, wormhole signature connecting a system a few jumps away with the agent system, and the signature only being scannable/useable by the new player to discourage exploits. A civilian scan probe launcher + civilian scan probes wouldn't take much skill, but could encourage injection of the Astrometrics skill book.

Why? So new players have an in-game tutorial on how to find wormholes and the basics on what they can do.

To answer your second question on what needs the most attention from CCP, I'd have to say that I think corp management needs updated the most as it affects everyone regardless of where they live (unless they live in an NPC corp). Sure CEOs and Directors work around and with the current system, but it's a mess with odd limitations and vulnerabilities. I learned it through trial and error over my first two years playing.

What needs the most help from the CSM? Everything. If something is an issue for players, it's our job to tell our elected representatives and it's their job to put pressure on CCP to change (and hopefully improve on) the mechanic in question.To give a more regional-based answer, I'd like to see nullsec sov changes finished in a way that discourages stagnation, while still being the fields from which capital and supercapital fleets are grown and then killed (I miss the big battles, and it saddens me to think that they may not happen again.).Lowsec is (by virtue of its physical geography) a patchwork of systems spread throughout highsec. I'd like to say it's overlooked as much as wormhole space, but now we have new wormhole space. More space.... but not more players(?) is my assumption.Thera may be popular with pilots already familiar with wormholes, but how many characters ever ventured into a wormhole before they were three months old? I've had wormhole friends comment on how dead nullsec is when they roam through it, and they're partly right.With fewer players in the game, that means fewer residents everywhere----including nullsec bittervets unsubbing or just growing up and getting busy with real life. The game needs to be enjoyable for current players but not have such a steep learning curve.

The Kronos Ritual

You are active and passionate about the game we share. You are also well versed in politics and niches in eve. As a WH resident I would be happy to see you make it in. Good luck on your campaign! I will vote for ya.

I think because it is very much passive income, the amount of effort currently involved is fine.

There are a couple minor changes that I'd like to see done:- saving a planet layout so that a player can easily replicate it between planets (similar to saving ship fits)- sharing those layouts between players

Personally, I would like to be able to put multiple command centers on a single planet while maintaining the current limit on the number of total command centers a player can have (e.g. option to have up to six on a single planet rather than just one each on six planets).

I'd like to see jump freighter fatigue cut by 50% of the current accumulation rate. I'd also like to see the Rorqual range upped to 10LY, but have the same fatigue accumulation that the jump freighter currently has. If a t2 Bowhead ever gets made, I think it should have the same accumulation rate (and 10LY range) as the Rorqual.

My thoughts on fatigue in general is that it's a terrible idea to make it harder to move goods from one place to another, but placing limits on military force projection is different, and should be treated differently. Until the rest of the sov changes come out, nullsec is limited because local defense can rely on carriers and supers more easily than an attacking force can attack with them.

If elected to CSM, I'd ask CCP for statistics on the average number of active accounts with carrier and dreadnought skills trained and in-training, and based on the results (which my guess is that they've declined), modify capital training time some. Without easing the time it takes to get into the ships necessary to take and hold nullsec sov with a new group, players are forced to either not go to nullsec or join an existing group. Phoebe has reinforced the need for coalitions and non-aggression pacts to secure their borders as much as possible on focus on peripheral security. In my opinion, that need will never go away. The only way to prevent it would be to put a cap on the number of standings an alliance can set, and that wouldn't encourage content.

Yes to a reduction on industrial fatigue (see previous reply), but while I wouldn't mind seeing blops fatigue reduced slightly (maybe 75% of current), I'd like to see cloak modules nerfed slightly. My suggestion would be a maximum cloak time for each module (higher maximum the better the module), but the longer you stay cloaked the longer your reactivation timer is once it deactivates. The penalty would apply to covert ops haulers as well, but perhaps with a 10% reduction per Covert Ops skill level. If you want to camp a system 24-hours, bring some d-scan inhibitors or fly a recon.

What single part of the game do you feel requires the most work in terms of iteration by CCP? *(Please choose just one!)Corporate/role management

Lowsec in GeneralDo you feel that lowsec is ‘fixed’? If so, explain why. If not, explain what you want to see done to fix it. *Whether you mean fixed because there was a problem or fixed as in 'static', my answer to both is no. EVE is not a static game and things change both by updates and player influence or use of the space. While it may be underutilized, that doesn't mean it needs fixing or any additions to make it more appealing just for the sake of trying to get more players to live there. I am not a lowsec resident; I live in nullsec, so I would defer on any changes to the region to the representatives who live in the area, such as Sugar Kyle.

Do you have any plans to push CCP, if elected, to iterate on lowsec in general? * (Feel free to elaborate)The biggest changes to EVE which I support and which would affect lowsec the most would probably be POS plans and PI layouts. I iterate my ideas more in my campaign thread, but tl;dr is being able to save and reuse POS and planet structure layouts for future PI planets or POSes. Just like saving, reusing, and even sharing ship fits, the addition of both these mechanics would benefit the majority of EVE players and eliminate a lot of useless tedium that bears no impact on players other than to frustrate them.

In your opinion, where should lowsec rank in terms of priority for iteration by CCP? * (Use a scale, or 'less than null, more than high', etc.)In terms of regionality, I would have to rank lowsec less than nullsec at the moment. Post-Phoebe nullsec is stagnant while awaiting the last two parts of sovereignty changes and I want to see that finished before CCP refocuses attention elsewhere. After sov changes are finished, I would still prioritize lowsec beneath the outstanding issues that all of EVE would benefit from such as corporation/role management changes and POS mechanic changes.

What, in your opinion, are the main factors that make lowsec more attractive to its current residents than other areas of space? *From my limited experience (~6 months spent there several years ago), I'd say players who live there like it because there's danger, but not so much that it requires participation in and support of multiple alliances to live there. Lowsec has different opportunities than highsec or nullsec, and it has different types of danger. Nullsec sov space is time intensive, but lowsec doesn't have to be while still providing a lot of similar PVP and PVE fun.

What is your thinking regarding piracy in lowsec – is it good, bad, or ugly? *From a lore perspective, I'm surprised the factions haven't gotten enough complaints to upgrade gate and station guns. In terms of pure gameplay, it's lowsec NOT highsec, so PVP content is a part of the life. Players shouldn't go to lowsec without expecting to be challenged and/or killed. It's low security with a warning dialogue box for a reason.

What are your thoughts on the notion that increased protection for PVE players in lowsec will result in a better lowsec? *If they want protected PVE they can mission in highsec or rent from Northern Associates[dot] in nullsec. Lowsec is an ongoing challenge to the players who live there, and who seem to love the adversity. I wouldn't want to see PVE protected more for a region meant to be less secure, but I would support additional, challenging and dangerous PVE content for the area.

What are your thoughts regarding Faction Warfare, particularly the idea that FW is the killer feature of lowsec? * *("killer feature" as in "killer app" - the defining characteristic of the space.)I've never been a member of FW, but I've done some frigate brawls with a few of my PVP characters which were fun. I think FW satisfies many players' appetites for small to medium scale warfare similar to nullsec sov warfare, but without as much blobbing. FW space is meaningful in a different way than the rest of lowsec, but not necessarily better when it comes to a player perspective. We all pick different places to live based on the play styles we love and the time we're able to play the game.

If elected to CSMX and subsequently informed by CCP that lowsec was the ‘hot topic’ for iteration in the coming year, what input and advice would you have for them? * (We all know that the 'informed by CCP...' part will only happen when hell freezes over - but just in case)I'd ask them to finish up their changes to nullsec sov first (if they didn't have that done by then), and then I'd complain about how they could be spending their time on more important and actual problems like corp/role management. Then I'd shut up and help as much as I could to give input on any changes despite my deficiencies in the area. From my perspective as a player, it's rarely possible to change CCP's mind once they've announced a development plan, so working with them to make the changes good for players is the best way to be of service.

BONUS – What lengths are you willing to go to in order to make pirates flashy red on overview by default again? (WE WANT WHAT WAS TAKEN FROM US!)I wouldn't have an issue with supporting it to be enabled by default. Personally, I would support a new player tutorial that explains overview settings and functionality. It's an important part of the game and might lead new players to ask questions like 'Where can I find a pirate?'.

Why should my readers vote for you (TLDR version)?I care about the broken parts of the game that affect THEM/all of us and not just the things in nullsec that I want to see changed.

What one thing do you realistically want to fix in Eve?Corp management/roles

What is your solution to this one thing?Put pressure on CCP to invest the time/code work into re-writing it, ask all EVE players to put pressure on CCP for them to change it..... It's a big change and it's something that needs public pressure to ensure action rather than advice on 'how' to fix it. Once they commit to a timeline for updating it, then I'd certainly give my advice and experience on problems dealing with roles and corp management mechanics.